Brothels: ‘Regulating evil is never good public policy’

You might expect P-I readers to cheer when federal agents and police arrest at least five people in connection with what they say are illegal fronts for prostitution.

They didn’t.

Instead, they criticized. Many railed against the length of the investigation — two years — and mourned what they said was bad use of city resources.

Several also suggested that prostitution be legalized, raising a long-fought debate over the effectiveness of the law. If an industry persists after it’s been made illegal, could there be a better way to tame its problems? Using the example of human trafficking, reader YepYepYep said regulating the industry was not the answer.

“Some of you have bought into some crazy ideology that says that if you legalize it, decriminalize it, and (better yet) regulate it, all of the problems magically disappear,” he wrote. “It is a hypnotic philosophy, however, it doesn’t change the fact that it is patently false. … Regulating EVIL is never good public policy. Period.”

In response, reader RationalThought defended his and many readers’ positions:

“I’m not defending these operations, nor am I defending importing human beings to serve as sex slaves,” he wrote. “What I am saying is that if prostitution was legalized to some degree, regulated by health departments, licensed and taxed, ‘black market’ prostitution would evaporate overnight. … Legalize it and all the bad stuff associated with criminalizing it disappears.”